drexel webmail of economic fluctuations or the ple.platoweb.comEconomic Cycle (Economic Cycle) or also known as the Business Cycle (Business Cycle) is a long-term pattern of growth (expansion) and recession (contraction) of the economy. According to the research Centre for International Business Cycle Research at Columbia University in New York, between 1854 and 1945 average economic expansion lasted 29 months while the contraction period lasted 21 months.

ple.platoweb.comHowever, since the end of World War II, the expansion cycle had stretched to nearly two-fold, with an average of 50 months, while the contraction cycle shortened to an average lasts 11 months. At all times, economists have tried to find the cause of economic fluctuations, but there is no one answer that can answer all the questions.

Among the general pattern of the business cycle, there are also some special cycles, among them: Kitchin cycle that lasts 39 months and is linked to fluctuations in the volume of stock (inventory) company. There is also a Juglar cycle, which lasts 8-9 years as a consequence of changes in the pattern of investment in plant and machinery. Furthermore, there is also a Kuznets cycle associated with the ownership and housing construction cycle, and the next is the longest cycle of the most famous - the Kondratieff cycle that takes place every 50 years.

Austrian economist, Friedrich Hayek disagree with John Maynard Keynes in trying to address the problem of the business cycle. For Keynes, business investment is random and driven more by "Animal Spirit", something denied by Hayek. Furthermore, in 1974 Friedrich Hayek won the Nobel Prize in Economics from observation and his theory of the business cycle - which states that the variation in economic output (cycle) depending on the capital structure that encourages economic processes concerned.

Disagree with Hayek, in the late 1960s, Arthur Okun, one of the economic advisers to the government of President Kennedy and Johnson - stating that the business cycle has been "extinct". Unfortunately for Okun - year after stating it - the US economy into recession.